


Lone Wolf

by Quingy



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Dreams, Dreamsharing, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 20:33:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7136078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quingy/pseuds/Quingy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas and Lavellan have an honest conversation about their relationship and future plans. (Post Trespasser)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lone Wolf

 

At first, she thought it was real. It had been so long since she’d last wandered the forests of the Free Marches. Choosing the sturdiest and tallest of the trees, she began to climb to the highest branches. She should have known from the feel of the tree that it wasn’t real, but in her eagerness to see the sky she barely paid attention to the unnaturally smooth bark beneath her fingers.

The wolf made no noise as it prowled towards her tree, but she sensed his presence. She looked down at the forest floor and into the face of the wolf, dozens of red eyes gleamed at her from the darkness. Relief surged through her at the sight of the wolf; it had been months since she’d last seen him. She had feared he had simply stopped caring.

The relief she felt faded the longer she stared into those eyes. It was replaced by doubt, fear… hope. All the questions, the arguments she had been obsessing over, and now… here he was.

She dropped from the tree with an agile leap, landing close to the wolf, but not too close. She didn’t want to scare him away.

“Hello, Solas,” she spoke barely above a whisper, but the wolf’s many eyes blinked in acknowledgment. “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again,” she added. The wolf let out an uneasy whine, and it tore at her heart. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He had visited her in wolf form before, but he had never been so close. Had never lingered long enough for her to speak to him. She had no idea what made tonight worthy of visiting her dreams, and part of her feared the answer. Had he come to attack her? Here in the fade, where she had no chance against him. Her only advantage here would have been Solas’ anchor, which he had removed from her. Even had she her new bow, she still needed more practice learning how to wield it with one hand. She was at his mercy, here, and they both knew it.

“Was it always about the anchor? About the orb?” she demanded. This question had consumed her more than any other. “If your plans were always to destroy us yourself, why bother helping us stop Corypheus? Don’t tell me it’s because you wanted to ease our suffering, or let us go out happy or any of that nonsense, either,” she snapped. After a moment she sighed. “Once you told me you owed me the truth, but you’ve never been brave enough to give it to me.”

The many eyes of the Dread Wolf considered her. Eventually, a decision was reached. The wolf did not twitch, but she heard Solas’ voice in her mind, as if he were speaking softly in her ear. “I aided the Inquisition because any suffering Corypheus caused was my fault. I may not believe in this world, but I hold no ill-will towards it’s people.” His tone became unbearably sad. “You are all victims of my poor decisions.”

“Is that what I was?” she whispered, her voice nearly cracking. “A poor decision?” A few seconds later she found the hard side of her voice. “Or a victim?”

“You are my punishment.” His voice swelled with self-pity, and it infuriated her. “The price I have to pay for my mistakes.”

“How dare you?” her voice was like a crash of thunder, and the wolf’s many eyes blinked in surprize. “We are more than just the aftermath of your ‘mistake’, Solas. The ancient elves fell. You speak of the atrocities committed by the elven gods, and the lengths you went to in order to stop them. Because they needed to be stopped. If you hadn’t done it, they would have fallen another way. Nothing lasts forever, Solas. You have no right to decide that our time is over.”

“’Nothing lasts forever’, you say. To you, time is a finite resource, and will inevitably beat you. To my people? Time was never our enemy.”

“One more mistake to fix, is that it? How many mistakes do you have to make in the process of righting the first one?”

“The first one is the only one that matters; if I fix it, nothing that happened here will exist.”

“Not even me?”

His voice dropped, soft and silky. “I will always carry you with me, vhenan.”

“That will be such a comfort to me once I’m dead, I’m sure,” sarcasm dripped from her words like honey. Solas did not reply. “You’re the same as Corypheus, and you can’t even see it. You’re so blinded by your own loss, your own mistakes. You would force the world to suffer in order to right them.”

“Corypheus wanted to rule you, your world. He woke in a world he did not recognize and saw it as an opportunity to seize power. To become a god. I have no such ambitions. I woke in a world I did not recognize, where magic is rare and feared. Elves and spirits are trod on by humans, and humans in their ignorance have conquered and crushed everything in sight. The legacy of our people is lost, everything good has been forgotten, all our wisdom squandered. Tell me, were you in my place, what would you do?”

“I wouldn’t kill everyone in order to ease my grief.”

“Even if your mistake had gotten all of your own people killed? Your surviving descendants suffering, living in poverty and squalor? Those who share your gifts, once thought mundane, now locked away and feared?”

“If you cared about the suffering in this world, you would be fighting to stop it here and now. Don’t try and lie to me like you lie to yourself.”

“I suppose it was foolish of me to expect you to understand,” he admitted.

“No, I think you knew I would understand better than anyone else, and I still wouldn’t agree with you. You can’t stand hearing an opinion that differs from your own. How could anyone possibly know more than the infamous Dread Wolf? You’ve praised my wisdom before, yet now you refuse to hear it.”

“That’s—“

“You knew you were going down this path, and you chose to be with me anyway. You knew I would have to die for you to succeed. What were you looking for from me? From us? Clearly it wasn’t a future we could share.”

“I don’t know.”

She choked on a laugh. “You don’t know? I thought you knew everything!”

“You… I fell in love with you. I didn’t have a plan. I just… wanted to be near you for as long as I could. As long as we had together.”

“Why settle for so little? We could work together, like we did against Corypheus. With the Inquisition’s resources… we could build a new world for you to be proud of.”

“It will never equal the world that has been lost.”

“Sometimes when you lose something, you can’t get it back, Solas.”

“So I should stop trying? That’s not the same advice I’ve received from you before.”

“You don’t stop trying. You choose to go forward, not backward.”

“We’ve identified the problem. This isn’t a world I have any interest in going forward in, vhenan.”

There was silence for a time. Lavellan broke it, shaking her head. “I guess we’re going in two different directions, then. Good luck living in the past, Solas.”

“Take care with your remaining future,” he replied.

His voice receded from her mind as the lone wolf stood and walked away.

**Author's Note:**

> I made myself sad writing this. Damnit, Solas.


End file.
